Meta Patterns - How To Think About Patterns

Successful patterns in social contexts are emergent properties of social activities. We observe a number of events and suspect that a "pattern is emerging" or as Leo Tolstoy wrote in Anna Karenina, "All happy families resemble one another, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

The purpose of pattern language is to decode the "patterns of success" so they can be replicated. The problem is that those who create the successes are often not good at unpacking them into a structure that others can learn from.

Context:

Many of the patterns on thise site contain excellent ideas and many fine statements of intent or piurpose and prescriptions for solving the problems indicated, but very few of them contain useful pattern langauges that others can draw onm.

This pattern is started with the aim of showing how such submissions can be converted into pattern language.

Discussion:

Pattern elucidation is an analytical process that attempts to reach a general conclusion by exhaustive particularisation in the process of which, personality and narration are replaced by roles, relationships, context and process. Not every community has a Dorothy Okello, but many communities have a women's health activist who needs better communication with her counterparts in other villages, regional centres and the WHO.

Not every community includes the nephew of the regional governor, but many will have a person with more vertical connections in the social and political hierarchy and knowing how to engage that person to support a project is valuable knowledge.

By teasing out the roles, relationship, context and process in multiple successful programmes, we hope to enable the pattern to reveal itself. Achieving the first part of that pair is the purpose of this pattern.

I have started with Pam McLean's Human networks bridging the digital divide in rural Nigeria because it deals directly with a project that has some history and is unfiolding in a very difficult environment where unsuccessful choices will quickly become evident. That it continues at all means that it must be doing something right, the question is, what?

The first step is to read Pam's document which has a number of characteristics that will, unfortunately, need to disappear. These are the narrative and anecdotal tools that give life to storytelling, the connectives that enable us to graps and recall the gist of the story even after we have forgotten the details themselves. However, in the immediate future, the whole document needs to remain available because at this stage we cannot know for sure where, and why, the pattern language will need to branch, drilling deeper into some aspect that previously seemed self explanatory.

The vital points to remember from Pam's pattern is that,
1. although the project objective is to bring communication tools to rural Nigerian villages,
2. the problem that she is solving is how to reach that goal by using Human networks

While the outcome in this particular case may be to establish ICT network access, the way it is being dealt with when tthe access doesn't yet exist, might also be applied to introducing environmental awareness in such a community, or attempting to eradicate feamle genital mutilation.

This is the point of pattern language, that we can derive from one context, successful strategies for another context altogether.

Solution:

This is a start on describing the solution to the problem of extracting from narrative knowledge the implicit understanding behind it. The html structure is not good, with far too much screen space included (to be fixed). The original material is coded in red followed by the enquiry into its statements. The indents indicate that some queries may be subsets of a higher level one. In future iterations I would expect that small sets of these queries would become patterns in their own right as more expertise is brought ot bear on the issues. You can download an RTF file of the document here and feel free to modify and extend it yourself.

Human networks bridging the digital divide in
rural Nigeria

The problem of the digital divide

I am not keen on DD as a top level problem.
Lack of access to technology is not, in itself, a problem. Certainly
within the context of the Pattern language project, we might be
looking at economic, gender or political
exploitation, environmental problems caused by inappropriate
activities, health and educational
problems, employment etc. all as subsets of
poverty. But let us assume that we have dealt with those and decided
that the problem can be solved by Better Access to Communications
Tools.

Sub Problem

Particularly
challenging in rural areas, where there is poor infrastructure, high
levels of illiteracy, no telephones, and an established pattern of
population drift (and brain drain) from rural areas to the urban
areas and overseas.

(Para transferred to Solution}

Context:

A rural area in Nigeria.The approach to crossing
the digital divide that is being developed there could be relevant to
any place which has similar elements.

The basic elements are:

A large rural area,

How Large?

What is the geography? (Are
there high points that could be wireless relay stations [See Juasun
project] or rivers that are used for transport.

What is the climate/
landscape?

Infrastructure

Beyond the reach of
telephones but has effective human communication networks (e.g.
Oke-Ogun).

How far away are existing
communications networks?

What plans exist to bring
communications closer?

What regulations currently
control ownership and operation of
communication networks?

What infrastructure is
there?

Roads? (paved/ unpaved –
open all year or closed seasonally by rain/ snow etc.)

The digital bridge project
in Oke-Ogun, Oyo State Nigeria, was the vision of the late Peter
Adetunji Oyawale, founder of CAWD. He was a man of many parts,
including local champion, ICT professional and son of an illiterate
peasant farmer.

What particular properties
did each of his qualities confer on his ability to carry out the
task?

How important are
these factors in choosing the evangelist?

Could they be distributed
among more than one person?

Which of them are absolutely
critical in this context?

He was a digital bridge
personified. He built enthusiasm for a sustainable development
project amongst the rural community in Oke-Ogun and amongst his
friends on the connected side of the digital divide in the UK.

How did he do this?

What benefits did he
emphasise?

What costs did he talk
about?

How were the costs and
benefits resolved so that the project was accepted as a reasonable
use of the community's resources?

Peter’s
life was an example of the population drift that occurs from rural
areas to the developed world, a succession of moves from illiteracy
to education, qualifications and skills, and no opportunities to
apply those skills back home. He believed that the answer was to take
information to people instead of having people move in search of
information. He believed that digital technology could enable a
practical and cost effective approach to improving educational and
employment opportunities in rural areas like his home.

How did he convert this
belief into a story/proposal that captured the imagination and
energised his community?

What steps did he take
between making his proposal and implementing the project?

How many of those steps
were locally necessary but variable by community and culture?

How many of them appear to
be essential to a successful implementation?

Dealing With a Major Disruption

Despite Peter’s tragic
premature death in Nigeria in December 2000,

What were the circumstances
of his death?

Was it in any way linked to
the project?

How common is that in this
region?

What does it imply, if
anything, for succession planning in projects of this kind?

How is that process
managed in this community?

his vision has continued to
grow and develop. Individuals and groups are developing to take on
and extend the many roles he initiated. The OOCD (Oke-Ogun Community
Development Agenda 2000 Plus committee) has taken his role as local
champion. CAWD, with its history of supporting his vision, and its
access to information and technical expertise, is enabling the
project from the connected side of the digital divide.

What differences have these
changes made to the way CAWD operates?

Personal communication links
between Nigerians in London, and the community in Oke-Ogun, help OOCD
and CAWD, and strengthen the foundations on which the project is
being built.

What has been the process to
transfer from the individual to the
groups?

How were those groups
chosen for the roles they have undertaken?

How well fitted to thoseroles are the groups that are performing
them?

How have they had to adapt
to be able to fulfil those roles?

What would you have done
differently if you had the choice?

In Oke-Ogun the information
network relies largely on word of mouth, through the village markets,
the weekly meetings for religious worship, and the trading networks
between the village markets and urban centres. The main urban centres
have telephone lines and public e-mail access. Some e-mail and
telephone communication is possible between the urban centres and the
UK, but web access is virtually impossible.

What is the content of the
word of mouth network?

What do people tell each
other about the project?

How do you measure the
effect of that spread of information?

What do people coming to
the project through that network expect to find?

How accurate are their
expectations?

What do they use the
project facilities for?

How long do they stay in
contact with it? (What is the drop off rate?)

Why do people drop out?

In the UK access to theInternet is easy, so contacts can be made
and information can be collected on behalf of the project.

What kinds of information do
you collect?

Where do you get it from?

What do you do with it?

Give some examples of
information collected and delivered and its effect?

How do you find out what
information is needed?

How do people in Nigeria
find out that they need a particular piece of information?

Contact between Nigeria and
the UK is enhanced when people visit friends and relatives in
Nigeria, and physically carry Internet
printouts, videos and letters between the two countries. It is not
instant online access for the OOCD committee and it is not
video-conferencing, but it is a step in that direction.

At what level of physical
connection does this become workable?

How many people carry
information to Nigeria?

How often does the project
use this courier system?

What are the limitations and
down sides to this method?

What are the other benefits
of doing things this way?

Together the OOCD and CAWD
are clarifying Peter’s digital bridge vision of providing
Community Digital Information Centres (CDICs)
linked to a community radio station.

How are they clarifying the
vision?

What was unclear in the
original vision?

How much of the original
vision was incorrect or inadequate to the task it was supposed to
perform.

Give examples of

the original vision

the process by which it was
changed

why it needed to change

the changed vision.

Prior to building the ICT
infrastructure, or ‘information highway’, ‘information
traffic’ is flowing in both directions. The OOCD is recognising
how the community could benefit from online Internet
access.

How are these benefits being
discovered?

What are they?

How are they being
communicated to the community?

How are they being taken up
and what are the benefits that flow from
them?

CAWD and OOCD’s
shared awareness of potentially useful ‘information traffic’
is increasing. Later this ‘information traffic’ will flow
through the community network, to and from the CDICs and the linked
radio college, and through the wider connected community.

How is the shared awareness
evidenced?

How is its increase being
measured?

What is the significance of
the increase?

What does the information
traffic consist of?

What kinds of information
are flowing in this traffic?

How
is it being carried?

Who is generating the
traffic and who is receiving it?

What effects is this traffic
having on theproject?
(How is it being used?)

For the ‘information
highway’ CAWD UK is researching appropriate technology

What kinds of technology
does the project need?

How does it decide on the
capabilities and functions that it
requires?

What process does CAWD use
to identify appropriate technology?

Does it start with a
shopping list of functions and find technology to meet them

Does it start
with the resources [technical, financial, infrastructural]
available in Nigeria and look for technology that they can support)

How are the decisions made
about which technology to adopt?

What happens then?

while the OOCD is discussing
ideas with local government chairmen, gaining support and finding
appropriate locations.

What ideas are being
discussed with local government?

Why
do those ideas matter?

What kinds of support are
they giving?

What is their agenda in
doing so?

How are appropriate
locations identified?

What criteria do you use to
define appropriate locations?

How did you reach these
criteria?

The first objective is to
provide the OOCD with online Internet
access instead of printouts generated in the UK. The vision goes much
further, as outlined above.

How is this access defined?

Who will have the access?

How are those people
identified?

How will it be financed?

The speed of implementation
will depend on the resources the project can attract, but we
anticipate an incremental approach, growing in response to expressed
needs of the community.

What is the starting point
of the incremental approach?

How will the community
express its needs?

How will they be
prioritised?

Therefore:

;Ideally digital bridge
building should be a collaborative venture from an early stage, needs
driven as well as technology driven. However people in rural Africa
are poorly placed to be actively involved in designing digital
bridges for their communities.

The Oke-Ogun
digital bridge project combines a technology led approach (from the
connected side of the digital divide) with a needs driven approach
(from the rural communities and their representatives). This has been
achieved by recognising the value of existing human communication
networks in the rural areas, beyond the reach of the telephone
network. The fact of population drift from rural areas to the
developed world adds to the scope of the network. From the beginning
the project has involved a human network ranging from the
multi-cultural community in the UK to peasant farmers in distant
rural Nigeria.